Hurricane Rita in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. (Photo courtesy of
Jeff Schmaltz, NASA/GSFC )
Hurricane season starts soon. Experts predict an active season with four “major” hurricanes. What happens if a storm hits while there’s still an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Tanya Ott reports.
Transcript
Hurricane season starts soon. Experts predict an active season with four “major” hurricanes. What happens if a storm hits while there’s still an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Tanya Ott reports.
If a tropical storm hits while there’s still oil in the water, it could disastrous for the coastline and several miles inland. Mark Wysocki is a Cornell University climatologist.
“All that oil would get into the marshlands and some of the homeowners’ properties and so forth and that would make it very difficult then to remove that oil from those types of locations.”
When Katrina hit Louisiana it destroyed some of the oil distributor piping, and they’re still cleaning up in some of the wetland areas.
Wysocki says the one upside is that oil makes it harder for water to evaporate. Tropical storms need evaporation to build strength. So an oil spill might actually keep storms smaller.
The state
proposes returning some of the land to its natural marshy state, and using other parts for stormwater
reservoirs. (Photo courtesy of the National Parks Service)
The state of Florida is working on a plan to restore water flow to its troubled Everglades. It wants to
buy a huge sugar grower and the land it owns between Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades. Ann
Dornfeld went out on the lake to find out what’s at stake:
Transcript
The state of Florida is working on a plan to restore water flow to its troubled Everglades. It wants to
buy a huge sugar grower and the land it owns between Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades. Ann
Dornfeld went out on the lake to find out what’s at stake:
The first thing to know about Lake Okeechobee is that it’s not your stereotypical clear blue lake. It’s
shallow, murky, covered with tall grasses, and thick with everything from birds and rabbits to frogs
and alligators.
The lake is about 35 miles wide. It’s known as the ‘liquid heart’ of the Everglades. And Paul Gray is
here to take its pulse.
Paul Gray: “I think it’s a glossy!”
Ann Dornfeld: “What’s that?”
Paul Gray: “A glossy ibis.”
Gray gets excited about birds. That makes sense – he’s the Science Coordinator for the Audubon
Society’s Lake Okeechobee Watershed Program.
It’s his first time out on the lake since the last big storm, and he’s eager to see how it’s doing.
Stormwater is diverted into the lake from development and farmland like the U.S. Sugar fields. That
floods the lake, which has nowhere to drain because it’s surrounded by a dike.
The best way to get to the middle of a marshy lake is an airboat.
(sound of airboat starting up)
As the boat zips across the grassy lake on a cushion of air, brightly-colored bugs and tiny green frogs
the size of your thumbnail land inside.
Once we skid to a halt, Paul Gray scans the water, and throws up his hands, disappointed.
“We’ve stopped in an area that’s probably four feet deep now. This is very, very sparse – just a little
stem sticking up every four to five feet. If everything was working right this would be all vegetated,
full of birds and stuff. Right now I’m not sure what will happen to it. [sighs] It’s a little demoralizing
right here, but we’ll look for some better spots.”
All this vegetation drowned in the last big storm.
“All of Okeechobee’s water used to flow into the Everglades, but now it doesn’t do that anymore.”
Instead, extra water is dumped into the fragile estuaries. They’re supposed to be a delicate mix of
saltwater and freshwater. And dumping all that lake water into them destroys the ecosystem.
“And the great tragedy is in 2004-2005 we had so many storms, and we dumped so much water
from Lake Okeechobee that we could’ve met all our water needs for a decade. The year after dumping
all that water out, we were in a severe drought and the farmers were only getting 45% of the water
they wanted.”
Last summer, the state of Florida announced a tentative deal with U.S. Sugar Corporation to buy the
company out. U.S. Sugar’s land blocks the flowaway between the lake and the Everglades. The state
proposes returning some of the land to its natural marshy state, and using other parts for stormwater
reservoirs. Gray says the U.S. Sugar deal would be a huge boon to the lake and the Everglades. It
could even improve the birdlife in northern states and Canada that fly south for winter.
“When those little warblers and things reach Florida, they’ve gotta get fat. They need to double their
body weight before they fly across the Gulf of Mexico, or they can’t make it!”
We arrive at a shallower part of the lake, and Gray pumps his fist in victory.
“This is much better news. We’re sitting in a big patch of green plants with little white and pink
flowers. It goes on for several hundred yards. This is called smart weed. It produces little very hard
black seeds. And ducks love these seeds, and migratory seed-eating birds like sparrows and other
things love these seeds. When all of the wintering waterfowl get down here they’re gonna have a ball
with this! [laughs] Wow. That’s nice. Alright, we can go.”
It’s a small success. But Gray says until the flow of water into Lake Okeechobee is returned to normal,
the liquid heart of the Everglades will be struggling to beat.
Ken Brunswick at the Limberlost marsh (Photo by Sam Hendren)
The Limberlost marsh was written about by Gene Stratton-Porter, a
popular novelist in the early 1900s. Stratton-
Porter was best known for her fictional accounts
set in and around an the swamp. (Photo by Sam Hendren)
A red-winged blackbird at the Limberlost marsh (Photo by Sam Hendren)
Biologists say we’ve lost about half
of the number of songbirds we had just 50 years
ago. Part of the reason is the loss of habitat.
Many birds need wetlands. Sam Hendren has the
story of one man’s love of those birds and his
work to save their home:
Transcript
Biologists say we’ve lost about half
of the number of songbirds we had just 50 years
ago. Part of the reason is the loss of habitat.
Many birds need wetlands. Sam Hendren has the
story of one man’s love of those birds and his
work to save their home:
When Ken Brunswick was a kid, he wanted
to study birds. Brunswick grew up near the
western Ohio town of St. Henry in the 1950s. He
says it didn’t take long to read all the books
about birds in the local library.
“I knew exactly where all the bird books were
because at that time that’s what I had my heart
set on, being an ornithologist,” Brunswick says.
One of the books that inspired Brunswick
was written by Gene Stratton-Porter. She was a
popular novelist in the early 1900s. Stratton-
Porter was best known for her fictional accounts
set in and around an Indiana swamp called the
Limberlost. She was also an amateur naturalist
and wrote several books about birds.
“I was in the eighth grade in that little two-room
schoolhouse reading ‘What I Have Done With
Birds’ by Gene Stratton-Porter, and the teacher
walked up to see what book I was reading, and
looked at it and the teacher said, ‘You know that
place isn’t very far from here.’ And I didn’t know
what she was talking about.”
The Limberlost actually was only a few miles
west across the state line. Stratton-Porter
moved to the area in 1888. But to the locals, the
trees were valuable lumber and the swamp was
a waste of land. Stratton-Porter wrote that
commerce attacked the Limberlost and began,
she said, its usual process of devastation. By
1910, two decades of destruction were
complete.
“This Loblolly Marsh was what I consider the
heart of the Limberlost area and this marsh was
actually the last thing that was drained in this
area so the farmers could start farming it,” says
Brunswick.
Brunswick became a farmer himself. He
started a dairy only a mile from the old Loblolly
Marsh. Through the years he learned more about
the swamp and the birds that lived there.
Later he formed the Limberlost
Remembered project. The group’s mission: to
bring Loblolly Marsh back to life. And they’ve
made a lot of headway.
Brunswick, who’s 63, is retried from farming.
He’s now an ecologist for the Indiana
Department of Natural Resources. He oversees
the Limberlost restoration.
We take a look at the changes aboard his ATV.
He’s maneuvering along a path near the edge of
the marsh. It’s thick with prairie cord grass,
switch grass and blue stem. Some of the grasses
have been planted here; other plant seeds have
lain dormant for decades and are now reclaiming
the ground on their own.
Out in the marsh the water is a gentle sea of
green and wildflowers abound around the edges.
But Brunswick’s love of the birds has not gone
away. And he’s thrilled to see them returning to
their marsh home.
“This is the area where we see American Bittern
once in a while. There’s been Virginia Rail, we
hear Sora Rail in here also. Sora is just a real
little bird that has just the dandiest sound when
it makes its call,” Brunswick says.
These birds and others like them are in
trouble. Most of the wetlands and prairies where
birds once thrived have disappeared.
Brunswick’s dream of becoming an
ornithologist never happened. But his work to
save the Limberlost has been his way of doing
something for the birds he loves.
“Actually when I think about this work I’m doing
it takes me back to that dream I had when I was
a kid in that two room schoolhouse. That dream
of being an ornithologist was taken away and
here, about 30 years later, seeing this land
flooding, I’m seeing birds that, some of them, I
never saw before.”
And the work of an old farmer has restored
the wetlands and natural areas that farmers
before him destroyed.
Wetlands, such as these in Michigan, have decreased, according to a report on the country's ecosystems (Photo by David Kenyon of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources)
A new report about the state of the nation’s ecosystems was recently released. And the results are so-so. Jennifer Guerra has the details:
Transcript
A new report about the state of the nation’s ecosystems was recently released. And the results are so-so. Jennifer Guerra has the details:
Think of the report as the environmental equivalent of an annual physical exam.
Here are the results: the number of wetlands in the country is down and virtually every stream contains contaminants. On the plus side, it looks like soil erosion has decreased. And farmers are able to produce more food on less land.
Robin O’Malley plans to take those results to federal lawmakers. O’Malley is with the Heinz Center. It’s the non-partisan think tank responsible for the report.
“In the same way the chairmen of the federal reserve comes up and reports to congress about how our nation’s economy is doing, we think we need to do that kind of thing at a national scale for the environment.”
In addition to the report, the Heinz Center also included a little roadmap of sorts to help the lawmakers along.
Wetlands in Michigan. (Photo by David Kenyon of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources)
A loon and its chick. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources)
Environmentalists say they don’t like a new
federal rule for replacing wetlands that lie in the
path of a developer’s bulldozer. But federal agencies
say the rule clarifies what developers must do to keep
damage to wetlands at a minimum. Tracy Samilton reports:
Transcript
Environmentalists say they don’t like a new
federal rule for replacing wetlands that lie in the
path of a developer’s bulldozer. But federal agencies
say the rule clarifies what developers must do to keep
damage to wetlands at a minimum. Tracy Samilton reports:
Developers must try to build around wetlands, but if they can’t,
they can build new wetlands somewhere else.
Federal agencies say the new rule helps clarify what developers must do to
make sure the nation doesn’t lose more of its wetlands.
Jim Murphy is with
the National Wildlife Federation. He doesn’t like the rule.
“If you’re losing a high quality marsh or fen and getting a
golf pond even if you’re counting up acreage, and you’re getting more acreage,
you’re getting a much less valuable resource in return.”
Murphy says some studies show that up to 80% of these man-made
wetlands eventually fail. The new rule also allows developers to create a
new stream if they have to destroy one.
Murphy says there’s very little
evidence that a stream can ever be replaced.
Pharmaceuticals and other toxins have been found in lakes like this one, Lake Champlain. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
Less than ten years ago, the U.S. Geological Survey found household drugs and
chemicals in almost every body of water they sampled. Each year since then, at least twenty
studies come out showing these chemicals can affect the hormone systems of wildlife –
and some studies have begun to look at effects on humans. Kinna Ohman reports that,
despite all this, little has been done to address the issue:
Transcript
Less than ten years ago, the U.S. Geological Survey found household drugs and
chemicals in almost every body of water they sampled. Each year since then, at least twenty
studies come out showing these chemicals can affect the hormone systems of wildlife –
and some studies have begun to look at effects on humans. Kinna Ohman reports that,
despite all this, little has been done to address the issue:
Every major water body in the United States, whether it’s a river, lake, or wetland,
probably has at least one scientist keeping an eye on it. Lake Champlain is no exception.
This large lake, forming much of the border between Vermont and northern New York,
has its share of scientists… and Mary Watzin is one of them.
Watzin’s the director of the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory in Burlington,
Vermont. She’s been studying how human pollution and activities impact the lake’s fish,
birds, and other water wildlife.
Watzin’s been around long enough to see quite a few of the big pollution problems resolved,
but you can’t help noticing some frustration when she talks about the latest issue:
“We’re cleaning up our act, at least with PCBs – we’re working on mercury – and
then there’s all this new generation stuff coming along.”
This new generation of pollutants includes the active parts of household chemicals and
drugs which have the potential to impact the hormone systems in wildlife. They’re in
detergents, cleaning products, and many types of drugs such as antidepressants, steroids,
and even birth control pills. Chris Hornback is with the National Association of Clean
Water Agencies:
“They’re coming from consumer products. In the case of pharmaceuticals, they’re
coming from drugs that our bodies aren’t completely metabolizing. Or, in some
cases, from unused pharmaceuticals that are being flushed down the toilet.”
And the problem is, once these drugs and chemicals leave our house, many of them aren’t
filtered out at wastewater treatment plants. Treatment plants were not designed to handle
these types of pollutants. So any lake or river which receives treated wastewater can also
receive a daily dose of these active chemicals.
Because these pollutants can number in the hundreds, just how to study them is under
debate. Mary Watzin says the old way just doesn’t work anymore:
“The classic way to examine one of these compounds is just to test it by itself. But
the fish aren’t exposed to these things by themselves, because they swim around in
the general milieu of everything that gets dumped out.”
But looking at how mixtures of household chemicals and drugs affect fish and other
wildlife can bring up more questions than answers. Because of this, Pat Phillips, a
hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey says we might want to concentrate on just
keeping these pollutants out of the environment:
“One of the things we see is that we see mixtures of many different compounds
coming into the wastewater treatment plants and coming into the environment.
And its very difficult to figure out what effect these mixtures have. But if we can
remove some of them, that makes a lot of sense.”
In the past, when the issue was industrial toxins, the solution was to control these toxins
at their source. This is because wastewater treatment plants weren’t made to deal with
industrial toxins in the same way they’re not made to deal with household drugs and
chemicals. But now, Chris Hornback says controlling this new generation of pollutants at
their source just isn’t practical:
“A lot of the substances that we’re talking about now including pharmaceuticals
and other emerging contaminants are coming from the households. So, those
sources are much harder to control. You can’t permit a household. A wastewater
treatment plant can’t control what a household discharges so that’s where public
outreach, and education, and pollution prevention efforts come into play.”
These efforts are really only starting. Some states have begun pharmaceutical take-back
programs to keep people from flushing unused medicines down the drain, but
participation is voluntary.
Everyone involved agrees that in order to solve this problem, it’s going to take people
thinking about what they’re sending down their drains. But just how to broach this
somewhat private topic is yet another question.
While new factories take up a lot of land, some corporations, such as GM, are setting aside acres for wildlife on corporate campuses. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
General Motors’ newest auto plant is the first to be certified gold by LEED. Included in the plans were several acres set aside for wildlife. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
About a quarter of all private property in the
U.S. is owned by corporations. In the past, many
companies have gone to great expense to maintain
their property with manicured landscaping and green
lawns. Now, as environmental issues are becoming an
important focus in the business world, more
corporations are turning their land into wildlife
habitats. As Gretchen Millich reports,
they are finding it’s good for the environment and
it’s good for business:
Transcript
About a quarter of all private property in the
US is owned by corporations. In the past, many
companies have gone to great expense to maintain
their property with manicured landscaping and green
lawns. Now, as environmental issues are becoming an
important focus in the business world, more
corporations are turning their land into wildlife
habitats. As Gretchen Millich reports,
they are finding it’s good for the environment and
it’s good for business:
Setting aside land for wildlife is becoming a big trend among
corporations in the US. For example, near its plant in Muscatine, Iowa,
the Monsanto Company set aside a 500-acre sand prairie. It’s home to
some rare species, including the Illinois mud turtle. Just outside of
New York City, Exxon Mobil is protecting 750 acres as a habitat for
birds like wild turkeys and wood ducks.
Bob Johnson is president of the Wildlife Habitat Council.
The council brings together businesses and environmental groups to
conserve and restore natural areas. His group has helped set up
hundreds of wildlife preserves at corporate facilities:
“Most of our members are not recognized as being very green and I think
that is really changing now because many companies are trying to find
ways of being a lot more conscientious about materials and energy. But
the real bottom line is habitat. Habitat is the greatest factor in the
control of the decline of species on the planet and I think companies
are realizing this is important for them to do.”
Johnson says there are lots of advantages to being green in the world of
business. Studies show that employees are happier and more productive
when they work for a business that shares their values. Also, it’s much
less expensive to maintain a wildlife habitat than to fertilize and mow
several acres of grass.
Bridget Burnell works at a new General Motors assembly plant near Lansing, Michigan.
Burnell is an environmental engineer. She oversees 75 acres on the factory grounds
that’s been set aside as wildlife habitat:
“What we’re walking up to right now is the first major wetland that you
come across. This is what all the employees can see as they are
driving along the main road east of the plant.”
It’s an unlikely spot for a wildlife refuge: on one side a sprawling
automobile factory, on the other, the intersection of two major
highways. It’s noisy, but still somehow serene.
Birds, turtles, muskrats, and frogs all live here undisturbed. A great
blue heron is flying over the wetland and in the distance, we see three
whitetail deer. Burnell says on nice days, teams of employees come here
to take care of the grounds and sometimes they work with community
groups:
“We’ve had about 20 events this year that we’ve had different community
organizations out here. Some of it’s directly related to educational
type things, like learning about the wetlands and the prairie
and different types of habitat. Others are specific to a particular
project, maybe wood duck boxes or song bird boxes, that type of thing.”
This factory is the only automotive plant to receive certification from
the US Green Building Council for Environmental Design and Construction.
GM saves about a million dollars a year in energy costs and more than 4
million gallons of water. And although there’s no direct cost savings on
a wildlife habitat, GM is finding that preserving natural areas can
improve the company’s image in the community, and also with its
customers and investors.
Bob Johnson of the Wildlife Habitat Council says these wildlife projects
are attractive to green investors, who choose stocks based on how a
company deals with the environment. He says some investors believe that
environmental responsibility is a reflection of how a business is
managed. And a lot of that information is available on the Internet:
“The individual on the street can do that today. They can evaluate this
kind of information and make judgments. So I think people are looking
for ways of distinguishing where they are placing their resources.”
Johnson says since corporations are the largest group of landholders,
they’re in a good position to slow down the fragmentation of wildlife
habitat. He says corporate leaders are discovering that with a little
effort, they can win friends and gain a competitive advantage.
For the Environment Report, this is Gretchen Millich.
Natural areas aren't the first thing that come to mind when you think of the city of Chicago, but the city has recently released a plan to protect the ones they have. (Photo by Lester Graham)
One of the biggest cities in the U.S. is trying out a new approach to protect its natural areas. Rebecca Williams reports the city’s mapping out the hidden little places that get overlooked:
Transcript
One of the biggest cities in the U.S. is trying out a new approach to protect
its natural areas. Rebecca Williams reports it’s mapping out the hidden
little places that get overlooked:
(Sound of birds and buzzing bugs)
You might forget you’re in Chicago as you walk up the path to the Magic
Hedge. It’s a big honeysuckle hedge planted as screening for a missile base
on this land that juts out into Lake Michigan like a crooked finger. When
the Army left in the 70’s, the hedge grew wilder. Migrating birds have been
going nuts over this little area ever since.
“It’s kind of like a bird motel, where on their trips they can stop and rest
and re-energize before they take off again. So it’s just a wonderful
natural oasis within this very dense urban city.”
Jerry Adelmann’s been a fan of green space in the city for decades. He’s
the chair of Mayor Richard Daley’s Nature and Wildlife Committee. Two years
back, Adelmann suggested making a comprehensive inventory of Chicago’s last
remaining scraps of habitat.
“We have some of the rarest ecosystems on the globe – tall grass prairie
remnants, oak savanna, some of our wetland communities are extraordinarily
rare, rarer than the tropical rainforest, and yet they’re here in our forest
preserves and our parks, and in some cases, unprotected.”
The city recently unveiled a new plan to protect these little places in the
city. The Nature and Wildlife Plan highlights one hundred sites, adding up
to almost 5,000 acres. Most of the sites are already part of city
parks or forest lands, but until recently, they didn’t have special
protection.
Kathy Dickhut is with Chicago’s planning department. She says before
Chicago’s recent zoning reform, these sites the city wanted to protect were
zoned as residential or commercial areas. Now they’re zoned as natural
areas.
“Buildings aren’t allowed, parking lots aren’t allowed. This area is not
going to be zoned for any other active use whereas other parts of the parks
we have field houses, zoos, ball fields, but in these areas we’re not going
to have structures.”
Dickhut says even though land’s at a premium in the city, the planning
department hasn’t run into a lot of opposition with the new habitat plan.
She says she just got a lot of blank looks. Local officials were surprised
the city wanted these small pockets of land.
And that actually worked in the city’s favor.
The city’s been able to acquire new lands for habitat that no one else wanted.
“As a rule we don’t like to take the throwaways for parks and habitat. But
in some cases, habitat lands work well where other things won’t work well.
If you’ve got a road and a river and a very skinny piece of land that won’t fit
anything else, that’s good for habitat, because anywhere where land meets water is
good for habitat.”
The city’s also turning an old parking lot back into sand dunes and
elevated train embankments into strips of green space. And though some of this land
isn’t exactly prime real estate, the city does get donations with a little
more charisma.
In Chicago’s industrial southeast side, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
discovered bald eagles nesting in the area for the first time in a century.
The birds were nesting on a 16 acre plot owned by Mittal Steel USA. The
city got the company to donate the land.
Lou Schorsch is a CEO of the steel company:
“Of course, you always would like to keep the option, it’s close to the
facility, if the facility expands, you could put a warehouse there, but we
had no immediate plans for it and I think when the city approached us, given
this unique circumstance of eagles returning to nest there, frankly it was a
relatively easy decision for us.”
(Sound of crickets)
Surplus land and a symbolic bird helped the city’s cause in this case. But
the city’s Nature and Wildlife Chair Jerry Adelmann hopes this can be the
beginning of a national trend.
Adelmann says preserving remnants of habitat on industrial lands fits into
Mayor Daley’s larger green vision for the city. It’s a vision Jerry Adelmann thinks doesn’t have to
be at odds with the city’s industrial past.
“I’ve had friends come visit and they think of Chicago as this industrial
center, City of Big Shoulders, gangsters and whatever and then they suddenly
see this physical city that’s so beautiful. Our architecture is world-famous but also our public spaces, our natural areas, our parks I think are
becoming world-famous as well.”
But Adelmann admits it’s early yet. It’s too soon to know how well these
remnants of land will function as habitat and what the city might need to
do to make them better. He says while it’s important to provide green
spaces for birds and bugs, these places are even more important for the people
who live in Chicago. Especially people whose only contact with wildlife
might be in the city.
One of the biggest cities in the U.S. has released a plan to protect nearly 5,000 acres of natural habitat within city limits. Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
One of the biggest cities in the US has released a plan to protect nearly
5,000 acres of natural habitat within city limits. Rebecca Williams
has more:
Cities are some of the last places you’d expect to find good wildlife
habitat. But Chicago officials have mapped out 100 habitat sites within the
city. These are remnants of prairie, savanna, dunes and wetlands that
either escaped development or have potential to be restored.
Kathy Dickhut is with Chicago’s planning department. She says the city
needed the habitat plan to maintain green spaces for migratory birds and
other wildlife.
“Unless you know that you have all these things you’re kind of hit or
miss-managing things and you can’t really manage to improve the system.”
Dickhut says when the city recently revamped its zoning codes, these habitat
areas were zoned as natural areas. That means they’ll be set aside strictly
as wildlife habitat: no buildings or ball fields can be put on the same
spaces.
GM will build three new crossover SUVs at the Lansing plant. Production will start this fall. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
GM chose materials inside the Lansing Delta Township Assembly Plant to minimize indoor air pollution. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
GM says its new Lansing Delta Township Assembly Plant is the first auto manufacturing plant in the world to get a gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
A new assembly plant from one of Detroit’s Big Three car companies is getting attention for its “green” qualities. Big Three automakers may not rank at the top of most environmentalists’ list for companies of the year. But some say the new auto plant is a sign that environmentally-sensitive manufacturing has finally gone main-stream. It’s not just because building green plants is the right thing to do. Really, it comes down to a different kind of green. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has the story:
Transcript
A new assembly plant from one of Detroit’s Big Three car companies is getting attention
for its “green” qualities. Big Three automakers may not rank at the top of most
environmentalists’ list for companies of the year. But some say the new auto plant is a
sign that environmentally-sensitive manufacturing has finally gone main-stream. It’s not
just because building green plants is the right thing to do. Really, it comes down to a
different kind of green. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has the story:
The first thing you notice about the smell of General Motors’ newest plant is how much
you don’t notice it. The plant smells like nothing at all. Not paint, grease or even that
new car smell. GM says it specifically selected materials for its new Lansing Delta Township
Plant in Michigan to limit indoor air pollution. And there’s a lot more to not notice about the plant.
Like how much space it doesn’t use.
On a tour with reporters, GM Environmental Engineer Bridget Bernal points out that less
than half of the plant’s 1,100-acre lot has been developed. The rest is left green, including
75 acres for habitat preservation:
“And basically in that 75 acres, we have a couple of pretty large wetlands, along with
some smaller wetlands. We have a rather large wood lot. And we’ve got a significant area
that’s being developed as native prairie.”
GM says it only planted native species on the site. And it planned ditches and culverts to
help filter water as it drains into other areas. A quarter of the materials used to build the
facility was recycled. The plant uses 45 percent less total energy than a traditional plant.
And, on the day GM gave reporter tours, it rained. Even that gets used. The water is
collected in cisterns, and used for flushing. GM says the plant saves a total of more than 4
million gallons of water per year.
Put together, all these elements were enough to win GM a LEED Gold Certification from
the U.S. Green Building Council.
Kimberly Hoskin is director of the council’s new construction program. She says she’d
been traveling a lot for work when one of her colleagues asked if she’d be willing to take
a trip to an event Lansing, Michigan.
“And I said, ‘Well, who’s it for? And she said, well, General Motors.’ General Motors, a
factory, is getting a LEED Gold Certification? Yes, I’ll go. Of course I’ll go. This is really
exciting.”
GM is not the first auto company to use green elements in an auto plant design. Ford’s
Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan was built earlier this decade with a 10-acre “living”
roof that helped manage storm water runoff.
But Hoskin says, out of about 560 buildings in the nation that have been certified by the
Green Building Council, only five are manufacturing facilities, and GM says the Lansing
facility is the first auto assembly plant to get Gold, the agency’s top rating.
But for GM, the green elements of the Lansing Delta Assembly Plant aren’t just about the
environment. They’re about cold, hard cash. The lower energy use alone will save GM a
million dollars a year. That gives people like Hoskin comfort that the plant isn’t just a
public relations move by GM and it increases the chances that we’ll see more green plants
in the future.
Sean McAlinden is Chief Economist with the Center for Automotive Research:
“As we slowly replace our old big 3 plants, many of which are very elderly, they’re all
going to look like this. They’re all going to be green plants. In fact, some of them will
keep getting greener.”
That’s good news for places where there’s a lot of auto manufacturing, but many people
are not ready to absolve GM of all of its environmental sins.
David Friedman is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says a green plant is nice,
but the real problem is still the product:
“Over eight times the impact on the environment when it comes to global warming is
once that vehicle leaves that plant. That’s the biggest step that we need automakers to
take and to improve the fuel economy of all of their cars and trucks.”
GM, and other automakers, say they are working to make cars cleaner. High gas prices
may force even more changes as sales of big pickups and SUVs drop off. Ultimately, car
makers’ profits could depend on building cleaner cars, just as keeping manufacturing
costs down will depend on having cleaner plants.
That could change the way auto companies think about environmental improvements
because going green will be about more than just doing the right thing, or protecting the
brand image. It will be about protecting the bottom line. What’s sustainable for the
environment will also be sustainable for the business, and both will show a lot more
green.
Hurricane Rita in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. (Photo courtesy of Jeff Schmaltz, NASA/GSFC )
